Patti Smith: Just KidsI'm not much of a fan of either of the artists featured (Patti Smith and Robert Mappelthorpe), but the book is very compelling taking me into a new world and time that I was not really aware of. (***)

But last week I went to a dear friend's marriage ceremony at City Hall in SF. It was quite beautiful to see him marry his long time partner. There were a group of about 25 of us tightly and lovingly gathered around the happy couple for their nuptials.

Bottom line: When I see how happy it makes them and how natural that love feels, I'm never more certain about the fact that gay marriage should be legal.

Make no mistake about it (I sound like GW Bush) opposing gay marriage is flat out wrong (I sound nothing like GW Bush).

The state does and will continue to do things the church disagrees with (see capital punishment and war). I'm certain that adding gay marriage to the list will do FAR more good than the destruction that either capital punishment or war have done to our society.

Fear...what a powerful and divisive force in our world.

I don't really know what (if any) the tipping point will be to allow gay marriages everywhere, but I'm really proud to live in a city that isn't waiting for it.

June 25, 2008

I'm deeply moved by the talents and the skills of the people who create and bring us such beauty.

I feel connected to the fact that human beings can do anything.

The individuals who did what they did at Marshall are human beings like all of us. And when moved by a cause, it really feels like anything is possible.

In times of hyper adrenaline, we can do amazing things physically, things we didn't even know we had in us. I feel like that unknown power is also available in our spirit and it doesn't even needs stress to manifest.

When I watch a movie like We Are Marshall it's just so clear that ANY of us can do great things. I'll admit that when I watch it, there's a part of me that is hard on myself for not, in my mind, tapping into that capacity.

June 20, 2008

I've decided to bestow a new moniker upon myself as I'm a single Dad and therefore must maintain some level of his Dude-ness. I'm a Dade.

Unfortunately, my days of being the serious shake and sex appeal dude of my younger years are behind me when I used to be a modern day John Travolta walking down the street in Saturday Night Fever....

...without the music (at least not audible, sometimes it was in my head)...and the paint cans...and the super cool shoes...and the ultra great hair (I've always had great hair but not ultra great)...and the dance moves...actually I do have his moves and some that Johnny T. just don' know 'bout

Wow, how's that for revisionist history, I should work for Bush.

No, I'm a Dade and what that means is:

I subscribe to Maxim but don't read it

I say that I went to "a live show" but it's actually live Barney and Friends (on or off the ice)

I often "go grab a bite" but unfortunately most of the time the place has to have curly fries and a word search as a menu

I play golf on the weekend but I'm usually putting into a clown's mouth rather than driving into an island green....oh do chicks DIG THE LONG PUTT!!!!

I'm up until 9 (pm, instead of am like I used to be)

I could go on and on, but I think you get it: I'm a Dade, and I'm down with that.

June 18, 2008

I'm starting to discover that I'm like a CPU, I do my best when I'm focused on one thing at a time. Funny that I almost feel like I need to defend myself (kind of like I'm doing right now) for being a single-tasking kind of dude.

Maybe multi-taskers lead a more exciting and fulfilling life.

Maybe they are the types that can:

watch a ball game on tv with P-I-P showing American Idol

be having porn star sex (of course with multiple partners who may also be working their crack....berries...wow I'm feeling randy today)

eating a delicious assortment of sashimi off of each other's bodies

AND twittering about it all at the same time.

Seriously, how far away are we from someone twittering while they are getting their freak on?

I don't know, but I know that it won't be me and I wonder if I'm the better for it.

June 11, 2008

I've spent the last several weeks knee deep into learning about the mechanics of search engine marketing. I'm by far no expert in it, but the world is pretty fascinating.

Where I'm a bit perplexed at this point is what role SEM should play for a site that is primarily content driven. It's not much of a problem to get people to come to the site. You pay Google for the adwords, people search, they click on your ad and voila you've got traffic!

However, how do you keep them? Ultimately, if you are content driven site, you want your differentiation to be content that is so on the money that when they come once, they bookmark you because you are a resource.

But that's tough. Most of the time, they come once, check out your article and move on.

I suppose the bottom line is that the way to make SEM work in the context of a content driven website without losing money has to have some type of high quality advertising campaign alongside it. But even that doesn't seem to make sense.

If I get 100,000 clicks through Google at 0.25 a click, that's a $25,000 campaign.

Let's assume, just for fun that you have an ad campaign that's you're getting $5.00 cpm (a REALLY high #). In order to break even off just that campaign, you have to generate 5,000,000 clicks, daunting indeed, even if you have a few running at that rate it's still high.

So, the question remains, even if you DO have VC money, what role should SEM play in the context of a content driven website?

June 02, 2008

I was eating dinner with a few friends the other night and we were talking about our tolerance for spoken or written sloppiness. Verbal crutches, grammatical mistakes, etc. happen frequently as we well know, but do they bother you?

Admittedly, they used to bother me. I realize looking back on it that I was usually being pretty arrogant about it (not that anyone else is being that way if it does bother them, it's just the way I felt about it). Additionally, I realize that when I pick someone apart on message delivery I am most likely going to miss the message content.

On the other hand, it is a little more difficult to swallow when it comes from someone who isn't usually sloppy. Also, my tolerance increases nearly to limitless when I'm talking to someone about an emotional issue.

Anyways, I think that its not to important how someone say something its most important what they are saying....right?

Man's Search for Meaning by Vicktor Frankl is a well known book about one man's struggle through concentration camps and his reflections in the context of a psychiatric approach known as logotherapy (a treatment that essentially focuses on helping the patient find meaning in life). I was a little reticent at first because I feel like I've heard the story so many different ways that I wouldn't get new perspective on it.

Wrong!

The first thing that I hadn't contemplated before was the idea that by stripping a person of their possessions, dignity and even hope that all that is left is our essence, our strength which we either can lean on or just forget.

The other interesting thing was how seemingly clinical he was in evaluating the behavior of different people in the camp. For example the Capos, who were prisoners put in the position of authority at the camps, who were often brutal he didn't condemn or judge them, he just described them.

The main takeaway from the book for me was how he described we find meaning in life. In that context he described the 3 ways to find meaning in life:

By creating a work or doing a deed

By experiencing something or encountering someone

By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering

He spent a great deal of the book (understandably) speaking to #3. He repeatedly quoted Nietzsche who said "He who has a why to live can
bear almost any how" which I thought was particularly powerful and a clear explanation of what #3 is all about.

I LOVED the way he described how unfair it is that someone who is unhappy (depressed) is ashamed in our society because they are unhappy (where the default should be happy) making it almost doubly difficult to get out of it. It reminded me of my brother who passed away who fought demons almost daily and I'm sure was ashamed because he had to, which looking back feels really unfair at a minimum.

The one issue I have with the book is that meaning (in any of the 3 ways as noted above) puts meaning essentially in the future. When any one of the three happen, then you can look back at it and assign meaning to life.

That's a bit troublesome because:

It makes the present secondary. You have to get somewhere or do something in the future to find meaning.

It leaves meaning to the past. I feel like you essentially have to look back on the past to evaluate that meaning and when you do, I think there is more than one way to interpret it, so how reliable is that?

Regardless of whether I agree with him or not, I love the depth and simplicity of the book, it's a great combo and a beautiful book.

Finally, in the Afterword, a writer quoted Frankl as saying "I do not forget a good deed done to me, and I do not carry a grudge for a bad one". That's awesome.